Chapter IX (1)

I too have been here with my gay companions—
But I do not like it.
For I love my companions with an inexpressible passion—
I love them better
Elsewhere.

This is a place
Of desolation—
Of those who do not love
Or honor one another—
A purgatory, a hall
That is entrance to the Pit,
Whither many a one
Will go from here.

Now I will rise,
And taking with me the volume
Of George Santayana, on the back of which
I have been writing,—
Taking my black lacquer stick
That is now almost famous,—
I will pay the check,
Forgetting not the waiter,
And hie me to a friend, if I can find him;
Or failing that,
I will go home
And in the awed grey dawnlight
Read from Santayana’s “The Life of Reason”
In five noble volumes.

For this is a place of madness,
And this city is doomed.

Emma Goldman on Trial

LOUISE BRYANT

Just about the time that one Portland, Oregon, newspaper had smugly remarked, editorially, that Portland was far ahead of many other cities in its treatment of Emma Goldman in that it ignored her altogether, pandemonium broke loose. Within a few days, that paper and all the others in town gave Miss Goldman such front page notices and such flaring headlines that the war in Europe seemed quite an insignificant thing compared to the peril which seemed to be threatening the “Rose City” on account of her presence in our midst.

The apparent reason for this agitation was that one little, old woman by the name of Mrs. Josephine Johnson had heard through a friend, whose name she refused to divulge (even when so ordered by the court) that on the evening of the lecture on Friedrich Nietzsche somebody had distributed a pamphlet on birth control.

The real reason for the arrest was that the police wished to break up the meeting. They had previously sent Miss Goldman a notice that she could not speak any more in Portland on any subject whatever. This order could never have been carried out as we have free speech in Portland, so they used another method.

Miss Goldman and Dr. Reitman were arrested on the evening of August 6 just after the meeting began, and at 10:30 at night all bail except cash was refused, which is contrary to all idea of justice. But for the efforts of Mr. C. E. S. Wood, who has always been a staunch friend of all free-thinkers, Miss Goldman would have been thrown into jail in a city where she has been allowed to lecture every year for nearly twenty years and where her friends have come to look forward to her annual visits as we do to all the other good things that come to us, like the spring and the rain and the sunshine; for of just such healing and life-giving qualities are her inspirational messages.

There were two trials. The first was the usual sort and really is of small interest. At this trial held in the Municipal court, Miss Goldman and Dr. Reitman were found guilty of distributing obscene literature and fined $100 each. As a matter of fact, Miss Goldman knew nothing about the distribution of the leaflet, but she certainly would have approved of it if she had.

This sentence of the lower court was promptly appealed, and in the second trial, which took place in Dept. 5 of the Circuit court under Judge William N. Gatens, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

When we remember that one of our bravest rebels, Margaret Sanger, will soon have to face a trial on a similar charge we can only hope, vainly and wildly perhaps, that she will be fortunate enough to have a presiding judge as fair-minded as Judge Gatens.

Some of his remarks were so refreshing, coming as they did in such fine defiance of the usual attitude of those on the bench towards those who are accused, that they are worthy of quoting:

During the trial Judge Gatens said:

“The Court says the defendants are not here charged, as has been stated by the council, with creating anarchistic tendencies, or with being anarchists; they are here to be charged for the offense set forth in the information and for no other offense.

“Every person, when charged with a crime, should have the right to know the nature of the crime with which he is charged, meet the witnesses face to face, and be tried without prejudice; not to be tried on the ground that you don’t like this person or that person because they have some view different from yours.

“Now it seems to me that the trouble with our people today is that there is too much prudery. Ignorance and prudery are the millstones about the neck of progress. Everyone knows that. We are all shocked by many things publicly stated that we know privately ourselves, but we haven’t got the nerve to get up and admit it; and when some person brings our attention to something we already know, we feign modesty and we feel that the public has been outraged and decency has been shocked when as a matter of fact we know all these things ourselves.

“I am a member of the Oregon Hygiene Society. We get out literature and place it in the toilets all over the state, telling people how to guard against the evils of venereal diseases and so forth. We do that for the uplift of humanity, to protect society from all those things, and the public does not seem to be very much shocked about it.”

Poetry Versus Imagism

HUNTLY CARTER

_I entirely disagree with Mr. Carter’s point of view—as much of it
as I can fathom. But I hope his article will provoke discussion
that will lead to clearer understanding of the Imagist’s art in a
country where even poets are blind to it. Mr. Carter states his
position briefly as follows: “The Imagists claim that the
subjects with which they deal find a completer and more adequate
poetical expression in the Imagist form than in any other.
Granting that this is so, the question still remains whether this
form is essential to poetry or whether it tends to exclude
poetry. So one has to consider what poetry really is and what
it implies. My article is designed for this purpose.” How
horrible!—to treat miracles like this!—The Editor._

A few years ago I went to the Falkland Islands to sheep-farm for a bare subsistence, and while living on a lonely station twenty miles from everywhere, so to speak, tending my flock, what time the half-breeds came and helped themselves to my humble belongings, I experienced a new emotion. Perhaps it would be more correct to say I became aware of the nature of an old emotion. I felt the currents of transcendent energy which I felt in my childhood. But I now felt them more frequently, and I saw that I was elevated by them beyond the normal course of every-day life. At such moments I forgot the sheep, the pastures and the marauding half-breeds. I even forgot the strong colour and form of nature. I saw something ridding me of solid things and leaving nothing but a fluid universe. I saw distinct forms melting to formative motions. I had been caught in the midst of an intense current—a transforming current of livingness. Moreover, I was free to the current, with the result that I became a part of itself—fluid—unresistingly, and was actuated accordingly. For the time being, I moved as the fluid element most moved me. Later reflection showed me that I was moved by some ineffable thing which I believe to be poetry. It may be that the soul is made of poetry, and after the human soul has freed itself from the fetters of materialism it becomes re-converted to poetry; that is, a part of its own flow or motion. I do not think materialists will understand this. But it will be clear to the spiritual minded.

I am sure that the hypothesis, that poetry is simply soul-stuff, is a verifiable one. I am convinced that in my Falkland Island days, whenever I was raised by intensity out of my material self at a higher level than actuality, whenever such intensity annihilated time and space, obliterated that personality which I call Huntly Carter, lifted me to the infinite and eternal and left me dumb, I was experiencing poetry. I know that the hypothesis involves two assumptions. First, that poetry cannot be written. It can only be expressed in motion or action. And it can only be expressed by the person who receives it direct from its source or fount. Hence a significant poet is not one who writes verse, but one who lives poetry, _is_ poetry. The second assumption is that every human being who possesses the smallest soul vibration possesses a poetry-sense, and is, in fact, a potential poet. Given absolute freedom, he, too, would become poetry, such is the power of conversion residing in the element waiting to operate upon him. Which is not absurd when we come to think of it.

I find I am not alone in the attempt to rescue poetry from the lumber heap of verbalism and verbalists, to say nothing of verbiage, and to restore it to the infinite. I remember reading in an early number of the London _Poetry Review_ that life has a rhythmic origin and poetry resides first of all in the rhythms of motion and sound. Of course “sound” is redundant, seeing that sound is the result of motion. I read further that poetry ultimately finds its way into language as the vocal expression of the fundamental motion or rhythm. Could anything be clearer? We feel the motion or rhythm and act it. And we attempt to express it in words in the last resort. Perhaps, some day nearer the millennium, it will be discovered that language (verbal of course) is the last resort of the poetically destitute.

The gist of what I read was this: First, poetry is the transmutation of some natural element (motion, sound or what not) into simple emotion (motion passing into e-motion). Then as the generic emotions pass beyond the senses they are handled by the intellect. One knows what the intellect does. Being peculiarly constituted to submit everything to scrutiny and analysis, it seizes upon the vague and indefinable characters of the human feelings and attempts the impossible task of analyzing their composition and stating their quantity and quality with precision. (Note what great emphasis the Imagists place upon the value of precision.) In other words, the intellect sets to work to regulate poetry by form and law. (Again, note how the Imagists emphasize the importance of form and law.) I suppose only the poet who proceeds upon instinct and despises methodical verse-making, recognizes the stupidity of trying to express poetry in terms of intellectual states of mind. To him, the vision of poetry in terms of cerebralism can only have one effect, namely, to kill poetry.

After reading this explanation of poetry, I felt I ought to credit the writer with a desire to exalt poetry to the Infinite. First, however, it was necessary to determine what he meant by the process of “transmutation.” If he meant the activity of the “thing” which I call poetry, and not the “thing” itself; if he was thinking of the change effected in the poet’s soul after it has received the rhythmic element which effects the change; then poetry to him was clearly the operation and not the operating agent. Further, there was the individualizing meaning to be considered. Let us assume that the poet’s soul receives rhythms or vibrations from the Infinite, which it instantly converts into its own. Just as a magnetic needle receives its own currents and points aright. Where is one to look for poetry? Is it the vibrations themselves, or is it the act of conversion? I sought the answer in the writer’s own words that “poetry resides first of all in the rhythms or motion,” and I concluded that he was not making a precise use of the word “transmutation.” So I was able to relate his explanation of poetry to one I had published somewhere in _The New Freewoman_. This was my explanation. There is a creative force underlying all phenomena. At an early period of the world’s history when self-ownership was real—not a dream—man was provoked by this force into poetic action. The force operated by dissolving man into its own and thereby exalting him mystically. But as man became more and more intellectual, so gradually he lost the power of being dissolved, and provoked into mystical action. With the result that he invented words to take the place of action. And as this process of degeneration continued, so he evolved substitutes—paid actors, poets, painters—to do for him what he had lost the power to do for himself. Thus the verbal poet is simply a projection of man’s lost capacity to poetize himself and for himself. That is, the power to obliterate himself physically. I need not go into this point further. If necessary, I could show that many human activities and most human institutions are symptomatic of the long drawn-out diseases of self-suppression and self-annihilation. Mind, I speak of the spiritual self and not that usually confused with a corporeal nature.

This rather long but necessary preface brings me to another and more recent attempt to recover the old emotion. I refer to my recent experience with _The Egoist_ and the subject of Imagism in its relation to poetry. I suppose most intelligent persons are inquiring what Imagism and _The Egoist_ have to do with each other. _The Egoist_ is obviously, as its name implies, a journal devoted to egoism. And its sub-title informs us that it is an individualistic review. Of course, egoism is an entirely individualistic affair. It consists in putting on the armour of self-assertion and defending the special faith and interests of one’s own. The power that one seeks to win is that of subjecting material conditions and exacting the utmost spiritual toll from everything. One pays no regard to the opinion of others, and refuses to play the part of a cypher, and at the same time refuses to play any part with others. To stand alone, and with a light heart to do the necessary bargaining with external influences for the possession of one’s own soul—this, it seems to me, is the true ground of egoism. Opposed to this is the process of self-suppression, the process of making bundles of cyphers. When men obliterate not their corporeal natures but the spiritual part of themselves, by coming together and acting together, and so juggle the play tricks in order that they may gain the applause and reward of their fellows, they are cyphers, not egoists, and deserve to be treated as cyphers. Persons who take this view of egoism have naturally been watching for the appearance in the pages of _The Egoist_ of numerous writers with aspirations beyond the group or societal level and not seeing them appear have begun to ask what _The Egoist_ “stands for.” I believe this question of “standing for” is one which is hurled at every new and significant journal. One knows that it has been flung at THE LITTLE REVIEW. There are two ways of answering it. A journal may show that it does “stand for” something, or it may confound its critics by claiming the high distinction of not “standing for” anything. Simply it does not exist in time and space. It exists by the grace of God, so to speak. As to what _The Egoist_ “stands for,” it is not my concern. The thing for me to note is that for some issues it has been affected by a very strong habit of Imagism. Now Imagism is not egoism. I do not think the Imagists themselves are egoists. To me they appear to be socialists by instinct and individualists by profession, just as Mr. Bernard Shaw is an individualist by instinct and a socialist by profession. He is an autocrat with a democratic lampblack rubbed over his face to commercialize his appearance. The Imagists are the reverse with the added difference that they use the polish to beautify rather than commercialize their appearance. In saying this I do not wish to appear to be attacking the Imagists. On the contrary, I am anxious to pay them every possible compliment. The fact that they are sinning against themselves must be its own punishment.

The tendency of _The Egoist_ towards Imagism flowered in the May issue. This issue was in fact “organized” (if I may use a trade term) from cover to cover to provide an honest and profitable discussion of the so-called “new” thing in poetry. As if poetry can be new. I had an idea that God made poetry when the world was very young indeed. Well, I turned to the May _Egoist_ in order to rediscover my emotion. I found the journal comprised an admirable treatise on the theory and practice of Imagism with some uncritical praise and a strong note of criticism thrown in. I read the prose with a good deal of interest, particularly Mr. Harold Munro’s history, origin and criticism of Imagism. It seems Mr. Munro objects to Imagism on the general ground that it is not inspired by the High Muses. It is rather the work of poets on the way to Parnassus who have stopped half-way to chase hares. The fact of the matter is that if an Imagist has a passionate instantaneous impression to start with he does not end with it. He simply destroys it before he has got very far with intellectual or technical theories. In Mr. Munro’s very words, “poets of the Imagist and other kindred modern schools are no longer visited by the Muses: they are not at home to them.”

How far this is true one may learn from the Imagists themselves. Here are some extracts from their contributions to the said “Special Imagist Number:”

“Somewhere in the gleam of the year 1908, Mr. T. E. Hulme,
excited by the propinquity, at a half-a-crown dance of the other
sex ... proposed to a companion that they should found a Poets’
Club. The thing was done, there and then. The Club began to
dine.... In November of the same year, Edward Storer, ...
published the first book of “Imagist poems.” This statement that
the Imagist movement was started by Edward Storer and T. E.
Hulme, was subsequently refuted by Mr. Allen Upward who it seems
received the Imagist message in 1900 from “a poet named Cranmer
Byng,” who had received it from Professor Giles, who had brought
a tablet of China from the East with all sorts of wonderful
little poems painted thereon. Later, Mr. Ezra Pound made for Mr.
Allen Upward the Imagist garland to deck his forehead in the
Court of Eternity. To continue the extracts, “Mr. Storer ... was
in favor then of a poetry ... described ... ‘as a form of
expression, like the Japanese, in which an image is the resonant
heart of an exquisite moment.’” “I (the writer) had been
advocating ... a poetry in _vers libre_, akin in spirit to the
Japanese.” ... “A dissatisfaction with English poetry as it was
then being written” led to a desire “to replace it by the
Japanese _tanka_ and _haika_.” “He (Hulme) insisted on absolutely
accurate presentation and no verbiage” ... “used to spend hours
each day in the search for the right phrase.” ... “We (the
Imagist group) were very much influenced by modern French
symbolist poetry.” “The group died a lingering death at the end
of its second winter.” “He (Pound) had made Imagism to mean
pictures as Wyndham Lewis understands them; writing later for _T.
P.’s Weekly_, “he made it pictures as William Morris understood
them.” So much for the history of Imagism and the expansion of
Mr. Ezra Pound according to Mr. F. S, Flint. One next learns with
regard to Mr. Pound that “he will sincerely work over a few lines
of _vers libre_.” He “tried to cultivate a sense of style, a
feeling for words” ... “he began to try to make poetry out of the
realities of existence.” ... “he is a ‘bookish’ poet.” ... “It is
inevitable that the ‘improved’ and selected world which the
Romantic poet creates should be composed, at least in part, of
ideas, of declaration, of emotions derived from _extensive
reading_.” If the prizes of this world ... were given to merit
... that poem deserves the prize usually reserved for some not
too revolutionary “honest craftsman.” Thus Mr. Richard Aldington
or Mr. Ezra Pound. Next as to “H. D.” “The poetry of H. D. has
been described as a kind of “accurate mystery” ... “it has the
precision of Goldsmith’s work.” “The things she (H. D.) has seen
and the emotions she has felt have been transmuted in her mind
into an unreality that reveals itself in images of an unsuspected
virtue and in phrases that seem to owe nothing to common speech.”
... “A poet who will accept nothing that has not come to her
direct.” ... “Her ceaseless scrutiny of the word and phrase.” “A
tendency to pare and cut too far.” It is Mr. F. S. Flint who
writes. From the next article one gathers that “every poet must
seek anew for himself, out of the _language_ medium at his
disposal, rhythms which are adequate and forms which are
expressive of his own unique personality.” And again, “what will
teach us most is our _language_ and life.” “He (Mr. Fletcher) is
seen at his best where fancy, imagination, musical ingenuity,
verbal magic, and a curious feeling for the landscape of Chinese
painting are fused in an intriguing and quite beautiful lyric
sequence.” Mr. Ferris Greenslet is writing on the poetry of John
Gould Fletcher.

I have quoted sufficient to indicate the history, aim, scope and methods of Imagism as set forth by the Imagists. Perhaps I should add an extract or two (also in inverted commas) from Mr. Harold Munro’s contribution.

“Their (the Imagists’) insistence on the necessity of an
absolutely fresh start in poetry.” They claim to have discovered
“poetry as an Art.” They devoted their energies solely to the
cultivation of new form and the adoption of a renovated language
oblivious of the fact that Idea must primarily dictate both.”
“The forms they still felt they might use, the vocabulary that
remained at their disposal, were extremely limited.” They had
thrown so much good material away “that they remained now almost
unprovided with a language or a style.” It looks as though they
threw away the baby with the bath water. So they divided. “Some
decided to tolerate the old subjects, but to discover a new
manner of presenting or representing, them; others, not so
satisfied, probed nervously the psychological recesses of the New
World and dragged out all the strangest rags of fancy they could
find, exhibiting them solely on account of their whimsical colour
and shapes. Further, “they do not profess to sing.” (Neither does
modern commerce). They swear by “the best of intellect.” “Their
minds are obsessed by the Town.” They acclaim the “passing
event.” They suspect the “beauties of poetry.” “The method of the
Imagists is to model little detached patterns of words.” One of
their principles seems to suggest “that if one first design a
poem, then the idea will be present by reason of the design.”
This recalls the principle of certain theatre reformers that if
one builds a new theatre a new form of drama will enter crowned
with daisies. It is equal to saying that given a donkey’s tail
the donkey will be present because of the tail.

After reading the Imagists’ theories I read their verse. Without, however, recovering my emotion. It left me cold. I asked myself if poetry had ceased to run through me. Was I no longer its agent? Had intellect interposed to censor it—with form? In other words, was my conception of poetry wrong? Was the Imagists’ conception wrong? Then I remembered that when I first experienced poetry and became aware of what I experienced, and when I began to express what I experienced, I proceeded on the principle of not mixing with my expressed experience any intellectual elements of thought, idea, reason or what not. I simply allowed some element to flow through me, and myself to be actuated by the flow. To me poetical expression was really an abstraction of the individualizing features of a spiritual experience received and transmitted in an instant of time. It expressed a creative movement abstracted from a creative movement, just as a subconscious drawing externalizes certain vibrations received through a magnetic medium. This creative movement appointed me its receiver that I might impart a momentary outwardness and sensational reality to its external content. Actually I was saturated with this precious element as a sponge can be saturated with rich perfume, and like the sponge was prepared to saturate in turn. In my belief, poetry is this spiritually saturating element. I would say it is a unifying element, bringing a like element in each of us into a unity of Soul or Spirit-consciousness. That is, the consciousness of Soul states which transcend this sordid material life in which we are so deeply immersed. I can imagine a true poet saturated by this element having glimpses of a supreme and superb Being, and thus entering consciously into that state of Being. But I cannot possibly imagine such a poet finding poetic expression in pots and pans and tup’ny tubes, and the confused and meaningless odds and ends of material life. I know there are certain poets who claim they have poetry in them, and because of this, they can poetize any object. Just, as I suppose, the bee can pour forth honey on any object, or wine can be used to adulterate water. But, of course, the honey does not change the object into honey, nor the wine turn the water into wine, any more than the poetry element poured forth lavishly can transmute a motor-car or any dead thing into living poetry. Indeed, all that poets, obsessed by the theory of poetizing town and kitchen stuff, really do, is to waste their precious possession. Actually they precipitate their sweet scent on a concrete floor. If such poets ever hope to take the Golden Road they must leave shrieking machinery alone and cease pouring the perfumes of Araby over cancrous civilization. They must leave perishable things to perishable minds and fit out an expedition to the Inner Self. Thereby they may hope to return wet with the poetic spirit. In other words, they will return with rich experiences lit by the flame of poetry. It seems then that the reason I could not feel the Imagist verse was because I was trying it by a law or principle which told me that poetry makes itself felt through the senses, not through the intellect. Furthermore, it makes itself felt not only by passionately initiating us into some mystery or other of reality, but by making us an active part of that mystery. The poet is a signature of poetic reality.

I do not say this is the ultimate test of poetry. It may be that poetry is so indefinable as to elude all tests. Again it may be that this very indefinableness is the test of poetry. The secret in its motion cannot be analyzed. One cannot explain it any more than one can explain the odor of a flower. One is aware of it—that is all. Yet, I may ask, how does the Imagist poetry stand my test? The first thing one notices in the poetry is its air of cerebrality verging on cerebralitis. Accordingly one discovers an inordinate love of the intellectual qualities of style, and consequently, a feverish quest for figures. So there are figures of every kind. Condensing and visualizing figures, figures of similarity, contiguity and contrast, figures describing and analyzing perishable things. There is in fact a profusion of figures having one characteristic in common, namely, a straining after novelty, originality and freshness. If for the sake of argument one admits that poetry can be expressed in words, of course one admits that poetry can be expressed in images or figures of speech. But this is not to say that figures of speech are consequently poetry. Otherwise every bit of foolish verse that has ever been written could lay claim to the imperishable Garland. Every tup’ny box would be entitled to arrest each passer-by with a cry of “Behold the poetry in me.”

Turn where we may in the wide-flung Garden of Verse and fruitful figures face us. Here are some gathered at random:

“He came like night.” (Homer describes Apollo’s descent from
Olympus.)

“Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.” (Ulysses’
eloquence.)

“With lockes crull, as they were laid in press.” (So Chaucer
pictures his Squire.)

“Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-top with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green.” (Shakespeare.)

“Her voice is but the shadow of a sound.” (Young.)

“The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.” (Pope.)

“Some true, some light, but every one of them
Stamped with the image of the king.” (Tennyson compares Arthur’s
Knights with coins.)

“Hair in heaps lay heavily
Over a pale brow spirit-pure—
Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,
Crisped like a war-steed’s enclosure.” (Browning describes a lady’s
hair.)

“What says the body when they spring
Some monstrous torture-engine’s whole
Strength on it? No more says the soul.” (Browning describes the
paralyzing effect of a wrong accusation on a highly
sensitive mind.)

“Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours.” (Shelley seeks to raise a resemblance between the
closing night of an eventful year, and the dome of a
sepulchre.)

“Stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like Cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween
The marks of that which once hath been.” (Coleridge describes a
break in friendship.)

“There was silence deep as death.” (Campbell.)

“There was silence as of death.” (Macaulay.)

“Earth turned in her sleep with pain
Sultrily suspired for proof.” (Describes a summer night’s thunder.)

“Long shall Comala look before she can behold Fingal in the
midst of his host; bright as the coming forth of the
morning, in the cloud of an early shower.” (Ossian.)

“In short the soul in its body sunk like a blade sent home to
its scabbard.” (Browning describes suddenly suspended
animation.)

I could quote thousands of similar figures. I do not, however, accept them as poetry, simply because they do not give me poetry. I dare say the Imagists would refuse to accept them as poetry, but on a different ground. No doubt they would say that many of these figures have been manufactured in the wrong place. They have been made in the cerebrum instead of in the Imagist quarter, the cerebellum. They are in fact suffering from cerebritis whereas nowadays the proper complaint is cerebralitis. So the Imagists would complain that such figures do not conform to their conception of poetry as _an Art_. The ideas in them are not expressed as they would express them. There is an absence of clarity, precision, novelty, freshness, originality and so on. Change the form from cerebriform to cerebraform, clip the words, remove the clichés, stop the singing, bring the image up to the quick-lunch standard and most of the figures would pass the Imagist test. All this is very pretty. But when all is said I do not see why some of the figures may not pass the test as they stand. When Mr. Hulme wants to describe a nature experience he does it in this lengthy fashion:

A touch of cold in the autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge,
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to talk, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

The similitude of a “red-faced farmer” does not raise the subject to heights. It is entirely lacking in dignity, is commonplace, and suggests ludicrous associations. For instance, much beer and a hot game of skittles.

When Browning does it he gets to work in a businesslike manner:

The sun looked over the water’s brim
And straight there was a path of gold for him
And a world of souls for me.

I quote from memory, but I believe I quote correctly. The image is expressed with brevity, clearness, and dignity. Keats’s way of expressing the experience is:

I who still saw the universal sun
Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world

The similitude of “heaving the shoulder” is open to the same objection as that of a “red-faced farmer.” It is undignified. It calls up a vision of the sun shooting coals down the front cellar.

Again, when John Gould Fletcher wants to describe umbrellas in a new way he refers to them as:

Bending, recurved blossoms of the storm.

And a special movement of rain is exactly described as:

Uneven tinkling, the lazy rain
Dripping from the eaves.

The ingenuity of these comparisons takes away Miss Amy Lowell’s breath. Writing in _The New Republic_ she uses the term “absolutely original.” And she tells us how well the first figure “makes us see those round, shining umbrella-tops,” while the second is “a marvel of exact description.” I dare say Miss Lowell is right. And yet the description, “The news was a dagger to his heart,” was just as original when it was written long, long ago, and is certainly as vivid and intense in its way as anything by Mr. Fletcher praised by Miss Amy Lowell.

Comparing the new with the old in this way, one may well inquire whether the new-fashioned Imagists differ so very much from the old-fashioned ones whom they seek to destroy. For my part, I have no hesitation in asserting that the subject of the old order of verse does not differ from that of the new order. If present-day Imagists are bringing a number of contemporary facts and incidents into figurative employment; if they cut their particular capers _In a Tube_, or in _My Backgarden_, or in a _Bath_, or at _The Breakfast Table_, or amid _Slaps_, or in _Chicago_, or in the _Pine Trees’ Tops_, or _After the Retreat_, they are doing precisely what the every-day Imagist has done with contemporary facts ever since the world began. So the truth is that subject for subject they are no nearer the Parnassian height than the mereset babbler of driveling verse. And if they are really mounting the peaks, if as they claim they are making an absolutely fresh start at poetry, they are being pushed there by expression or technique, not poetry. In their view the mere curling and combing of words is sufficient to elevate them above such common poets as Shakespeare and the rest, and to entitle them to a seal among the really elect in the poetry business. But, of course, the bare fact that the Imagists are out for a revolution in form does not prove that they are out to give us a taste of real poetry. It only proves they are out for a revolution in form. And if one examines their form carefully, I believe it will be found to prove that there are poets among us suffering rather severely from the modern cant disease of culture. They “know” so much rather than feel anything, and because they know so much one meets them in every nook and corner, talking incessantly about the necessity of other poets knowing what they know, and doing as they do. Indeed they regard the production and advertisement of their particular kind of goods, which have become a sort of cult among a large number of persons who believe in hard study and discipline, rather than in spontaneity and livingness, as the beginning and end of earthly existence. But if one come to the bottom of the whole business it really amounts to no more than this. Tennyson and Kipling turned their attention to verse-making. They did not write poetry. They wrote doggerel, because what they wrote was in doggerel form. The Imagists have turned their attention to verse-making. Perhaps it should be versicle-making. They do write poetry. They write poetry because what they write has a poetry form. In short, the difference between Tennyson, Kipling and the Imagists is one of form. If the former had used present-day Imagist form they would be supreme poets. There is nothing to prove that Tennyson and Kipling could not have cultivated Imagist form. Therefore Tennyson and Kipling could have written Imagist verse. They were potentially supreme poets. How anyone can reasonably pretend that mere form transforms a subject into poetry passes my understanding. How anyone, moreover, can suggest in cold print that such form is helping to make an absolutely new start in poetry is a point best left to the decision of mental experts. Still, on reflection, one finds it is all part of the modern “game” of confusing content with form. One must be grateful to the Imagists for one thing. For some time there has been a movement among poets of a certain school to shift the interest from poetry to themselves considered as deputies. The errors of the Imagists, who, apparently, are mistaken in their conception of poetry and the business of poetry, enables one to shift the interest from these poets to poetry itself. One can say to them, “We are not interested in you, but in poetry. To tell us that you are deputy receivers and recorders, to describe your aims and methods, to take us to museums and to invite us to study the fossilized remains of ancient literatures, is not to help us to enjoy your verse.” Poets do not get any nearer to poetry by setting up new rulers and standards. Poetry does not take us farther afield into speculating on form and technique, but farther from them. Poetry tends to shift the interest from the poet to itself, from the solid instrument of transmission to the world in solution. Indeed it tends to obliterate the poet in the physical sense. As I said it converts him into poetry. Now the reason why Imagism fails as poetry is precisely because it shifts the interest from the world in solution to a group of too, too solid poets. My conclusion is obvious. Before the Imagists can claim that they are making an absolutely new start in poetry, they must learn to obliterate their corporeal natures. The moment they do so obliterate themselves, that moment one can safely say “Now we are coming to poetry.”

I intended to show that one cannot write free-verse unless one is a free poet. I must return to the subject.

The New Idol

GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER

An old philosopher—Aristotle, of course—called man a political being. By this he meant that man was naturally endowed for society, and, further, that society could find its full fruition only in the state. To the old Greek, this political vocation of man seemed great and sublime. Only _one_ will ruled in the state. This one will synthesized all the individual wills, no matter how powerful and diverse they were. And this one will made all the distributive wills strong, and demonstrated its superiority to the totality of all such wills. The one will wills more than it can do, on that account becomes a statesman, that is, widens out his will to a state-will. Thus, the one will wins a new and wider sphere for its abilities and activities.

But it was the modern—post mediaeval—state which was the first to set the thought of that impersonal, unemotional philosopher in its true light. The modern state has brought to consciousness the whole gigantic weight of the world’s political unfolding of force. The modern state is related to what the ancient Greeks called state, the Hellenic city-community, much as one of our mighty industrial machines is related to the primitive tool of a day-laborer, or a modern machine-gun to the sling and bow of an ancient warrior. Our states are indeed machines. All their parts fit into each other with the utmost precision, and work with astonishing accuracy. Our states are also huge weapons with numberless barrels, but employed by a single will, unloaded at the word of a single Commander.

It was the first chancellor of the German Empire who once asserted at a meeting of the _Reichstag_ that _politics ruined character_! This of course put a damper on all the ardor that lauded to the skies the greatest invention of modern times, the new miracle of the state. This assertion clangs like a first elegiac note—like the intimation of an interior fatality, deep-seated already in the organism of the modern political and cultural life. This word utters no sentimental fanaticism which, with all sorts of romantic scruples and moral standards, observes the course of the immense evolution of folk life. This brave word comes from a man whom the whole world of his day celebrated as the foremost master of the art of politics. In his hands, the political machine underwent an unheard-of development of power. And what this statesman expressed only provisionally perhaps in an ill-humored, unguarded moment has been meanwhile developed by earnest men to a conscious, serious concern for men of a new and growing culture. These men have preached that men should turn aside from political life; they have seen in spirit a coming day in which state-less, unpolitical man shall have reached a purer higher stage of life than was at all possible under the banner of a political culture. _Anarchists_ we today call these warriors against the state. What they fight, these warriors, is not this or that particular form of state, not this or that particular institution, but the state in every form, state in general. But because the word anarchism is ambiguous, because it is not simply an ancient theory, but occasionally signifies a quite tangible _praxis_, we must distinguish between the ideal, the spiritual champions of anarchism, and the preachers of a propaganda of bloody deed. While, at best, the latter would only drive out the devil by Beelzebub, the former would have a noble faith in the victorious power of the idea. Theirs is the high faith that the might of ideals is mightier than the might of force. They trust that humanity will overcome the political malady through spiritual development and inner strength, and will mature in the direction of an anarchistic culture. And in the rank of these idealistic anarchists, who contemplate the state as the most grievous hindrance to a noble and pure humanity—a Prince Kropotkin, a Count Tolstoi, a former German army officer von Egidy—_Friedrich Nietzsche_ also belongs, aye, he leads the van of all the poets and thinkers who espy the future task of humanity in the negation, the overcoming, of the state.

Anarchism, even in its most ideal form, seems dismal enough to most men. Yet it is understandable—even a natural necessity—in the evolution of modern life. It is with the spiritual currents of life as it is with the vibrations of the pendulum. The stronger the movement toward the one side, the further the rebound toward the other. As a matter of fact, the political pendulum has been far removed from the line of equilibrium. The cultured peoples of Europe—and it was these, not the American people, which Nietzsche had in mind,—had worked themselves into a political debauch in which there scarcely seemed to be any other interest than that of politics. What the Church was to the mediaeval man the state became to the modern man—God manifest on earth! Men believed in this state as their Christ. All power in heaven and on earth seemed to be given to it, too. What was preached in the name of the state was a gospel to its believers. To these believers it even seemed a sin to doubt the wisdom of the state at all. It was blasphemy to contest the state’s claim to omnipotence. Once when it was said: Rome has spoken! all the rest of the world grew dumb in deferential silence. Later it was said: Paris, Petersburg, Berlin, has spoken! and a voice from heaven could not have been hearkened to more sacredly than did political souls take heed to such state edicts. Good? What is good if not that which benefits the state? Truth? But where is there truth apart from the word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the state? The political end sanctifies any means—makes anything good over which men would be otherwise enraged, stamps anything as true which would be otherwise branded a lie in the world.

Nietzsche hit the nail on the head when he stigmatized the state, in the sense of his time, as the _new idol_, and made it say in a Zarathustra discourse; “On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulative finger of God”—“everything will it give _you_, if _ye_ worship it, the new idol.” And this _culture_ of the state was brought into a system by the philosopher; it was preached in the pulpit; prayed at the altar. Numberless were the offerings which were brought to this new idol—of beings, of human happiness and of human life, aye, of human reason and human conscience! For whoever serves this idol, whoever would truly serve it, may no longer have regard for himself, may no longer consult his own judgment. He is the better fitted to be priest of this state, the less he is burdened with scruples of his own conscience. He is all the more serviceable a scribe, the more smoothly he can adapt his well-oiled theology to reasons of state. Truly, they were not the worst spirits who rebelled against such idolatry. They were prophets of a new culture who took martyrdom upon themselves, and no small martyrdom at that, to unhorse a belief in the omnipotence and omniscience of the state. For this belief oppressed men. Out of men with living souls, it made ciphers to be added to one so as to give that one worth. Politics needs masses, herds. The individual, the personality, who does not surrender himself to the masses, who does not think like an animal in a herd, is troublesome. Therefore, it passes as supreme wisdom of the state to uniformize all men, to discipline and drill men to whom the sight of a uniformized mass arouses the feeling of sublime beauty, to whom a thousand-throated hurrah sounds like the loveliest music. How much tender feeling, how much inner life, has been stifled in the day’s political alarum—who can tell? “Yea,” says Nietzsche, “a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!

“The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called ‘life.’”

The sin of the schoolmaster against man as he piles dead history in the image of the ugliest man upon the present, and blocks his future—all this has first attained to power and recognition through the political system, and has thereby become a fatality, an extremity of the cultural life of old Europe. So Nietzsche saw and said as he looked abroad over the lands and peoples of his day. Out of the spiritual formation of the individual, the state made a mechanical drill of the masses. Out of the teacher and educator of the people, there came to be a master of a school, a slave of a rule, of a method. The state laid its hand on head and heart—then it needed the historian to manipulate and adjust history for political purposes. The state took science into its service—and conquered praise from the mouth of the artist himself!

To seek salvation from political sickness, this is now the redemptive service of all the men and women to whom man is higher than the state—to whom _the ideals of humanity and of personality_ are alone sacred and supreme. The remedy today is what it once was in old Rome: secession, migration of the spirit to the holy mount of freedom, where the soul breathes no state air, where it is not suffocated and oppressed by the iron bars of the state. Secession in art—that means unpolitical art, an art which knows higher tasks than the glorification of political power, than the erection of shafts of victory, than promenades of victory! Secession in science—that means a free university whose teachers, says Nietzsche, do not receive their appointments through superannuated militarists and ministers of state, _a high school of the spirit_, in which there are no political honors and insignia, but also no state discipline and non-age—a school where everything is said and taught which an earnest inquiring soul can receive from the world of nature and of man in earnest responses of his spirit. Secession in religion—that means, finally, a free church, in which faith is not an official dictation, but a firm conviction of the inner man, a church where worship is not an inherited rule and custom, but the heart’s and life’s free expression in ways of its own. Who will deny that the best and highest which our day has to show in every sphere of the spirit’s life, must be considered everywhere as a work of secession, of rebellion; that all this has an anarchistic vein, an unpolitical, antipolitical, yes, a superpolitical stamp? Over all finer natures there have come a bitter depression and indignation at all political doing and dickering; they would rather stay and work at home where no one strives nor cries, than walk the streets so full of the uproar which politicians make. All souls, turned to within, the clairvoyants of the spirit and the fine tasters of life agree of course with Nietzsche, that “where the state ends, there man begins”! The state has its pattern and uniform for the “many too many,” for the superfluous who in great choruses bawl of the most superfluous that there is for man. Great souls seek sites for lone ones and twain ones, they seek them beyond the many too many—there they sing the songs of that which is necessary for man, the single and irreplaceable melody, through which man jubilates along to his higher existence. The state has killed and crushed the peoples, it has summoned into the world the great lie: “I, the state, am the people.” But there is only one redemption and convalescence from the state on the part of the people, a flight “to people who do not understand the state and hate it as an evil eye and sin in custom and law; which speaks its own tongue of good and evil and makes its own language of custom and law.” Thus is secession the emigration from the state into the _people_; the culture of the future is the overcoming of the state through the people!

To be sure, it is with mixed feelings that we penetrate and interpret the preaching of the anarchist Nietzsche. The catalogue of sins which, on a deeper observation of life, we have to charge to state _cultus_ is indeed great, and hence there is an anarchistic side to the heart of the modern man, as soon as he thinks of his own rights, as soon as he requires light and air for the free unfolding of his personality. We know that the state does not possess eternal life. The state is only a special form in which human social life can exist, not human society itself. There have not always been states. They came to be in the long course of the evolution of a people’s life! What comes to be must pay its toll to Father Time. The state will change—and pass! Hence it is indeed folly and superstition, it is idolatry, when we attribute eternal worth to transitory phenomena, and accord them an unconditional dominion over us.